Two teams of intrepid cricketers took part in the world's highest match today - on the side of Mount Everest.

Two teams of intrepid cricketers took part in the world's highest match today - on the side of Mount Everest.

Players, groundsmen, medics and spectators made the Himalayan trip to set a world record for a field sport played at the highest altitude.

The 50-strong group of amateurs and enthusiasts spent a gruelling nine days trekking to the site of the Twenty20 match at the Gorak Shep plateau, which at 16,945ft is just above the Everest Base Camp.

Locals helped to prepare the pitch, moving stones, pebbles and rocks - sometimes with pickaxes - out of the playing area.

In a highly contested game, team Hillary beat team Tenzing by 36 runs with six balls remaining.

Team Hillary captain Glen Lowis, who normally works in marketing, thanked the expedition organisers, medics and Sherpas.

The 29-year-old, from south London, said: "It has been truly one of the most memorable experiences of my life, I cannot thank all of the people involved enough."

Team Tenzing captain, lawyer Haydn Main, 29, also from south London, said: "Both Tenzing and Hillary are full of inspirational people and it's been our sense of team across the whole expedition that has made this record a reality."

The teams celebrated their record with a giant bottle of champagne followed by cups of tea.

The Nokia Maps Everest Test was inspired two years ago when cricket-mad expedition leader Richard Kirtley, a 29-year-old marketing manager from north London, noticed that Gorak Shep, the highest plateau of its size in the world, bore a striking resemblance to the Oval cricket ground.

"When I looked at it, I was struck that it was perfectly cricket field-sized and I assumed they must use it as a pitch," he said.

"So I asked a few of the locals, but no-one had ever thought about doing it. That's when I came up with the idea. I came back and floated it to a few people I knew, and it's grown from there."

The Queen and England captain Andrew Strauss are among those who wished good luck to the explorers, who raised more than £250,000 for Lord's Taverners and the Himalayan Trust UK.

The location of the wicket was at more than twice the altitude professional footballers are allowed to play at.

At that height the body absorbs only two-thirds of the oxygen it does at sea level meaning the resting heartbeat is about a third faster.

New Zealander Edmund Hillary and the Nepalese Sherpa Tenzing Norgay became the first to reach the summit of Mount Everest in May 1953.